Typography
is the study of type and type faces, the evolution of printed letters. Since
man did not begin to write with type, but rather the chisel, brush, and pen,
it is the study of handwriting, that provides us with the basis for creating
type designs.

The first thing to keep in mind
when thinking about the history and development of typography is that many early
printers were not just printers, but typographers as well. The first independent
typefounder was a French gentleman by the name of Claude
Garamond. Although not the inventor of movable type, Garamond was
the first to make type available to printers at an affordable price. Garamond
based his type on the roman font of Griffo
(a man commissioned by Manutius
to develop an italic type for the Aldine classics).

Before Garamond's independent practice,
men such as Jenson,
Griffo, and Caxton
played specific roles in the development of type. Jenson perfected the roman
type, Caxton conceived a bastard gothic font, and Griffo developed italic. Several
of the fonts we see on our computers's have evolved from the work of typefounders
of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.

The weakest period the history of
type rests in the sixteenth and seventeenth century printing presses. Many presses
(for reasons unknown) mixed many sizes and styles of type into single pages,
fliers, and playbills. These 100-150 years witnessed very little in the progression
of typography.